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There's a man in fatigues crouched on one of the tables with a water pistol in one hand and a coffee can in the other.

There is a reason for this.

When you have a whole fleet of three-legged multi-eyed blue-striped critters whose species hails from another dimension following you around because you managed to successfully raise their momma in captivity, it's your responsibility to see them housebroken. And while piddlin' and poopin' are relatively easy to deal with, these critters have a nasty sonic bark at full adult size. So learning not to bark without being told is also part of housebreaking. They're old enough to start learning, and the easiest way to teach them to quiet down is to startle the heck out of them every time they make an unacceptable noise. Which is why the seething mass of houndeyes all romping around nipping at each other and generally making a ruckus is periodically treated to the business end of a high-powered water pistol, or to the jarring clatter of a couple of pebbles being shaken in an empty coffee can.

The table part is because they're not quite up to jumping that far yet and Shephard really doesn't want his position overrun by puppies when he's trying to teach them discipline.

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There is an actual dog coming in with his master, stopping dead and giving a little whine of fright when he sees the blue-striped creatures milling about on three legs.

"Good grief!" the tall blond man coming in after them exclaims. "They have no heads! You, on the table, do you need rescuing?"

If he does, and Urquhart deals with the critters, there should be at least a drink in it for his effort.

"Huh?" Shephard looks up from setting off a stream of water. "Naw, they're my pups. The momma's upstairs sleepin'. I'm just teachin' 'em manners without being' stepped on or chewed on, is all."

"So they are meant to have no heads but instead a lot of what looks like eyes in what looks like the part where their neck should be?" Urquhart enquires.

"Yep," says Shephard. "Their kind ain't from Earth. Mouth's on the bottom, too. All part of their natural order."

Urquhart bends down to pat his dog. "They're all right, Franz," he says. "Don't hunt them."

The dog is still not quite sure about the critters.

"He'd better not. Spent too goddamn long raisin' these little fuckers to see it go to waste," says Shephard. "Them'n-"

"mrrrrYIP!" goes one of the pups. Shephard's head whips round and the can rattles sharply in his hand; the pup breaks off its yapping and falls back among its siblings.

"-them'n their momma."

"What do they make that noise with?" Urquhart says, astonished.

Franz carefully approaches the puppies and sniffs the air from a bit away.

One of the puppies comes up on its hind leg to have a better look at the big dog. "Look there," Shephard says. "Mouth's on the belly a ways south of the forelegs. Ain't got noses worth speakin' of, though."

The big dog cranes his neck to sniff at the odd, odd puppy.

"Dogs without noses would be rather helpless, I guess," Urquhart says. "What do they use instead?"

The puppy blinks in return before falling back to all threes. This is done by the reddish ring of muscle around the outside of its eye zone contracting suddenly from all directions at once, then rolling back to almost out of sight.

"They got real fuckin' impressive vision," says Shephard, "and when they git older that bark of theirs gits nasty. Grown up they're 'bout the size of a wild boar's hind leg taken off at the hip'n they got a bark that'll break glass. You git two or three of 'em together'n you got a pack bark that'll break a man's bones at five paces."

"Oh yes, that sounds like they pack some punch, and don't need keen noses or sharp fangs," Urquhart says.

Franz comes a step closer and sniffs at the puppy.

The puppy makes a low growling noise, dropping its forward end in what might look to an Earth dog like a play-bow. It gets hit in the back with a stream of water, though, and immediately breaks off to shake itself dry.

"No noise less'n I say so, dammit," says Shephard. To Urquhart: "They got good bite, too, they just got to git their prey on the ground to do it. Bark's better, though. I had their momma with me when all the demon shit went down here'n she was knockin' those motherfuckers over like they was sawhorses in a room fulla kung fu masters."

Franz tentatively nudges the puppy with his nose, ready to jump back if the little critter makes another such sound.

"I wasn't here when the demon shit happened," Urquhart says. "I don't even completely understand what happened yet."

"Looked like the goddamn resonance cascade all over again," says Shephard. "Some kinda hole opened up out back'n started letting shit come through from another dimension and it just did not fuckin' stop. There was all kinds of weird shit goin' down in the skies, too- looked like giant monsters fightin' or somethin', and more of the same in the building. Wasn't there for too much of that, though. Had to cover someone long enough to git rid of a nuke 'fore somethin' could set it off."

The puppy hops backward itself, blinking again as it settles in alongside one of its brothers or sisters.

"Bull, you quit bein' an asshole'n play nice with the big dog, you hear me? Rosanne, don't you let your brother be a fuckin' moron."

"How do you tell them apart?" Urquhart says. "And what is a nuke, please?"

"Boys've got darker markings, 'n there's only four in this litter," says Shephard. "Bull's the biggest boy. Alfred's the littlest. Chester's that one over there who- 'scuse me-" Another stream of water and a can shake. "Chester don't shut up none without a whole lot of fuss, and Horatio's got a broken stripe just north of his hip. Biggest girl's Fran, smallest girl's Alene, Grace's the boss of the litter'n pokes herself into the most shit, Lillian's slower'n the others, 'n Rosanne's more blue-green than blue in the stripe department."

He's spent long enough in the field watching deer herds move to get used to telling animals apart. Among other things.

"That'd be a nuclear bomb, my friend, a big ol' fuck you to everything that's right and good in God's creation," says Shephard. "Just about the most destructive thing humanity ever done made before the eggheads at Black Mesa tore space and time a whole new set of assholes. Somethin' like that goes off, you ain't never gonna see an explosion like it without goin' somewheres you c'n watch a volcano in action. Ain't much left after but green glass, radiation, 'n shadows burnt into the walls where people used to be."

"Hello, Alfred-the-not!dog!" Urquhart says, grinning widely when that name is mentioned.

"And one of those nuclear bombs threatened to go off here too, in addition to everything else?"

"Yep. Big fucker. 'Bout the size they dropped on Nagasaki- that's a good sized city in Japan," Adrian says. "And these're called houndeyes. Didn't name 'em, but it's as good a name as any."

"A houndeye called Alfred," Urquhart grins. "And I'm glad you got to the nuke in time. Where did you put it?"

"Named 'em all after admirals. Alfred's named after Alfred Thayer Mahan." He rubs at the bridge of his nose and directs a waterbolt at Grace, who was about to start barking. "I didn't put it nowheres, myself. Woman name of Claudia opened up some kinda wormhole'n shoved the thing into another dimension. It ain't comin' back. I just made sure she got there okay."

"Admirals," Urquhart says. "I wonder what an admiral called Grace is like. Probably neither gracious nor graceful, due to the requirements of her office."

He may be medieval, but he quickly learned here that in the future, anything men can do, women can do better. And that it works well for the future people.

"I met Claudia -- very young, always busy with technological things?"

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] began trolling tiwazRotorhead [AC] --

CG: HEY SHEPHARD
CG: YOU KNOW HOW YOU ARE TRYING TO WIPE OUT THE FUCKFACES WHO CONQUERED YOUR PLANET
CG: IS THAT STILL A THING THAT'S GOING ON?
CG: I GUESS THAT IS A PRETTY STUPID QUESTION, ISN'T IT

TR: Yeah, sure is.
TR: Been gathering up people who're willing to come and lay the smackdown.
TR: gear, too.
TR: you interested?

CG: YEAH
CG: THAT IS PRETTY MUCH WHAT I WAS TRYING TO ARTFULLY LEAD UP TO
CG: I HAVE A HUMAN DISGUISE AND AN ALMIGHTY FUCKLOAD OF SICKLES AND FRAYMOTIFS AND BLOOD-RELATED SUPERPOWERS
CG: AND A CHIP ON MY SHOULDER THE SIZE OF TWO UNIVERSES WHEN IT COMES TO IMPERIAL HORSESHIT
CG: AND FOR PERSONAL PRIVATE REASONS NOT WORTH GOING INTO IT WOULD NOT BE A GROSS ABDICATION OF MY DUTIES ANYMORE TO RISK MY NECK FOR A BUNCH OF ALIENS
CG: SO.....
CG: I GUESS WHAT I'M SAYING IS
CG: I'M IN.

TR: welcome aboard, then.
TR: the more slaughter on this one, the better.
TR: we're trying to get a drone load of worm-killer into the heart of the complex.
TR: and the drone'll have an easier time if the ground forces are being torn to shreds on as many fronts as possible.
TR: I'm going to be stuck in the air, but that can't be helped.

CG: OKAY MY COMPREHENSION OF WHAT WE ARE BITING OFF HERE IS LIMITED AT BEST
CG: WHICH IS JUST THE WAY I LIKE IT
CG: BUT IT SOUNDS A LITTLE LIKE WHEN WE TOOK ON THE BLACK KING, MOST OF STOOD NO CHANCE DIRECTLY, HE WAS THE SIZE OF A COUPLE REALLY PISSED-OFF BUILDINGS
CG: THERE WERE JUST A COUPLE OF PEOPLE EVEN CAPABLE OF LANDING A BLOW HE WOULD NOTICE
CG: EVERYONE ELSE'S JOB WAS TO COVER THOSE GUYS AND RETAIN CONTROL OF THE BATTLEFIELD AGAINST THE REST OF DERSE'S FORCES
CG: AND KEEP THE FROG ALIVE WHICH WAS SORT OF SPECIFIC TO THAT SCENARIO
CG: IS THAT ABOUT RIGHT?

TR: about right, yeah.
TR: the goal is to end the last Combine gene worm's existence.
TR: trouble is the Combine have most of their surviving military positioned around it.
TR: you begin to see the issue, I'm sure.

CG: YEAH SOUNDS PRETTY FAMILIAR
CG: WHAT KIND OF ARMY DO THEY HAVE?
CG: I MEAN YOU MENTIONED THE ADVISORS AS BEING ENORMOUS GRUBS WITH PSYCHIC POWERS
CG: WHAT OTHER KINDS OF DOUCHEBAGS ARE GOING TO BE OUT THERE?
CG: I HAVE TO ADMIT THAT FOR EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID ABOUT THE COMBINE I DON'T REALLY HAVE A CLEAR MENTAL PICTURE OF ONE

TR: fair enough.
TR: the Advisors themselves don't do as much of the fighting.
TR: they've got Synths they use instead.
TR: species they conquer and leave alive get more chips crammed in their heads than a Pringles factory.
TR: about half their internal organs get replaced with machinery, too.
TR: makes them dependent and obedient at the same time as making them tougher and faster.
TR: most of the ground forces are converted humans. lots of guns.
TR: there's also crab Synths the size of ponies.
TR: Hunters, which are three legged Synths with flechette guns. around human height. fast, but not well armored.
TR: Striders. thirty feet tall, look like three legged spiders, armored, big old warp cannon where the dick ought to be. lots of those.
TR: Gunships. also helicopters with converted human pilots. those are my department.
TR: Manhacks. flying razor blade robots you could knock out of the air with a crowbar or a baseball bat.
TR: couple of smaller kinds of Synth that look like giant ticks with mounted guns, but those are rare.
TR: might be headcrab rockets too- they load the little wretches into rockets and fire them as crowd control.
TR: that's the majority of it.

cg: okay
cg: doesn't sound that different from the chess armies Derse fielded actually
cg: lots of legs and carapaces and claws
cg: do they bleed?

TR: haven't met one yet that doesn't.
TR: if it bleeds, we can kill it.
TR: if it doesn't, we're gonna need a few more minutes first, is all.

cg: you asshole, you took my line
cg: but yeah, pretty much
cg: for reference i am officially speaking the knight of blood
cg: in sgrub terms the knight is a pretty versatile warrior class
cg: kind of backloaded, it was a struggle at first but once i scraped together enough boonbucks to buy all my fraymotifs it got a lot easier
cg: it is all about building up progressive chains of attacks, whether than means mowing through a horde of liches or madrigogs or constructing a pain scaffold around one of the bigger bastards in a more drawn-out battle

TR: you can have the next line.
TR: I'll leave it open for you. no charge.
TR: anyway. sounds damn useful.
TR: what these things have might not be red, but far as I can tell, it's still blood.

cg: ...
cg: for the record
cg: it is not normally red for trolls either
cg: ...actually that's why your text color always weirds me out
cg: tyrian purple was the blood color of our highest ruling caste, there were only two people in the history of the world who had it
cg: the only other person i ever met who used that color was a fish girl who would have been the empress if the game hadn't come along
cg: well, or she would've been sushi, when the current empress got through with her
cg: probably that one

TR: ...
TR: I had no clue. and now I have to laugh.
TR: me and my family are about as far from high caste as you can get.
TR: before the Combine we were from one of the lowest ranked, least regarded parts of the entire country.
TR: and we weren't exactly an important family in our area, either.
TR: so, yeah, the opposite of ruling caste, pretty much.

cg: well it doesn't matter
cg: the hemospectrum was a gigantic heap of bullshit anyway
cg: and actually feferi felt the same way
cg: the guy who shot her thought he had some kind of right to her as a matesprit because they were the last two seadwellers and obviously no trash-blood land dweller had the right to touch her
cg: so i'm sure she would be fine with giving it the posthumous obscene gesture of your choice
cg: the condesce would probably be pissed, but fuck her with a rusty 2x3dent
cg: her and the combine could swap recipes on how to best be colossal douchebags

TR: fair enough.
TR: maybe they'll get to meet up in Hell.

cg: that would be awesome
cg: especially because it would mean the condesce is dead, which is not a certainty
cg: oh well, even if she is alive it is a certainty we will never have to deal with her again
cg: man i just got the weirdest chill
cg: anyway
cg: it is not all Milliways people, right? will i have to pass for human? any local details i need to be aware of beyond the obvious in order to not give alarm?
cg: i can imagine your people are pretty skeptical about the idea of friendly alien interlopers poking their nub in earth human business, at this point

TR: yeah, there's more Resistance forces than Milliways.
TR: in terms of numbers, anyway.
TR: if you can pass for human, do it. safer that way.
TR: Alyx Vance is officially in charge. Gordon Freeman is #2.
TR: I'm the goon flying the big black lion from the Milliways garage, that's all I am.

cg: okay
cg: I will register a new account on here too, to give out to the natives to coordinate during this business
cg: which is when?

TR: sending date/time now.
TR: welcome aboard.

CG: GOT IT.

-- carcinoGeneticist [CG] stopped trolling tiwazRotorhead [TR] --

-- chirurGeneralist [CG] started trolling tiwazRotorhead [TR] --

CG: OKAY
CG: WOW WHAT THE FUCK EVEN IS THIS BULLSHIT.

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